Ventures

At the age of only 14, Faisal began what would be the first of many businesses: cobbling together stereo components to sell from his father’s home in Dhaka, Bangladesh in order to save the money he would need to support his plan to study in the United States. Since then, he has traveled many miles and his journey continues. Today he directs all his ventures through SHADOKA.

Shadoka enables entrepreneurship, growth, and social impact.

We bring together a framework, digital platform, thought leadership, and an expert network to fuel the aspirations of our customers and partners. Collectively these offerings accelerate organizations and communities to engage, educate, evaluate, monitor, and improve their programs.

Along with financial goals, a common thread among our customers and partners is their efforts to make a lasting, social impact, be it through job creation, investing in people, practicing corporate social responsibility or funding innovation programs trying to bring about socio-economic change.

Bengali word ‘SHADOKA’ is derived from the sanskrit word sādhaka. A sādhaka is a practitioner of a particular sādhanā. A sādhaka, or practitioner, is one who skillfully applies…mind and intelligence in practice towards a goal. Sādhanā (Sanskrit: साधना), literally “a means of accomplishing something”.

Our Philosophy

“Everything connects. Making connections between disparate things is the key to creative thinking. The ritualistic practice of thinking about how different things relate to each other, and how distinct things could be combined to make something completely different, results in sustainable innovation.

The ultimate objective is to produce a wealth of new ideas, dynamic innovations, and sustainable opportunities and methods of measuring them. Thus, financial success is a byproduct of what we do.

When we recognize the constellation of relationships within our ecossytem we can begin to understand their shared alignment, a process that I describe as convergence – the overlapping nature of art, science, and spirituality.”

– Faisal Hoque, Entrepreneur, Author

The “O” in SHADOKA

The “O” in the Shadoka logo is inspired by the 8th picture of the “Ten Ox Herding Pictures”. The 8th picture in the Ten Ox Herding is described as the “Both Bull and Self Transcended (all forgotten and empty)”. It symbolizes a “beginner’s mind”.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
– Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki

Like Suzuki, we believe that a beginner’s mind is what allows us to embrace the highest emotional qualities such as enthusiasm, zeal and optimism to creatively move ourselves forward. Read more about beginner’s mind on a Huffington Post blog by Faisal.